Upgrade From Hard Drive to Cloud Storage. Here Are A Few Options.

“Cloud Storage”, it’s a term that’s thrown around an awful lot. However, it’s become really big recently. Cloud storage is storing your data online, where it is generally considered “safe”. But why is this important?

Let’s say for example that your computer hard disk crashes, you drop your computer and it suddenly stops working, or even worse a fire consumes your computer. What happened to your important data? Is it lost? Well, if you have cloud storage backup system implemented, then fear not! It is all backed up! We’re going to take a look at a few of the most popular ones that are available for free today.

Dropbox

Dropbox is by far one of the more popular cloud services. The CEO of Dropbox has recently mentioned that there are about 1 billion files uploaded to Dropbox every day. This was one of the first types of cloud services I have used, and I can say it is one of the best. It is really easy to install and supports file sharing. If you accidently delete something you can even recover older versions of your file. The only downside of this option is that it only comes with 2GB of free storage, if you want more you can either send referrals or pay for more storage space. However one nifty feature is camera upload sync. Whenever you take a picture with your phone, it will sync the picture to a camera uploads folder.

Google Drive

Google Drive is Google’s attempt at using the cloud storage. It’s not bad, but I don’t see many features that are mind blowing. The one plus of Google Drive sync is that you can sync your online Google Docs for offline work. Google Drive comes with 5GB of free storage.

Box

Box storage is simply one of the best if you want to use it for business. There was a recent promotion where you could have signed up for a free 50GB of personal storage. However, the standard personal storage size is 5GB. The personal version of box is fairly similar to both Dropbox and Google Drive but it manages to combine both of the good aspects of them. There is cloud document editing and syncing, however there is no version history for documents.

SkyDrive

SkyDrive is Microsoft’s rendition of cloud storage. If offers the most storage space at 7GBs. It does almost everything that all the other apps do, but it outperforms in one area, Windows. If you own a Windows 8 computer or a Windows phone, you should get SkyDrive. It integrates very well and the web-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint can save you in a time crunch.

SugarSync

SugarSync once again is very similar to all the other ones, but what makes it stand out among the other ones? It allows you to choose what to sync, giving you complete control. There is no need to drag everything into a “Dropbox” or “Google Drive” folder. There is a standard 5GBs of space offered with this as well.

It should be noted that all of these apps have a mobile version of their app, which allows you to access your files on your phone. This is really great if you have just downloaded pictures from your latest vacation and you want to show all your friends and coworkers.

In the end all of these products sync files from your computer to the internet. There isn’t one that is the best because they all do fairly different things, and I use all of these products. Just pick the one that is best suited for your purposes and you’ll be set.